LABORATORY LOOKING TOWARDS THE FUTURE AND PAPER FORMS ARE NOWHERE TO BE FOUND

03/14/2017

Laboratory Assured Compliance Solution has been life changing, I would not go back to the manual paperwork, never… 

WAY before Laboratory Assured Compliance Solution (LACS), everything was paper. Each station had anywhere from one to four clipboards, each with a paper checklist on it. The checklist was either for instrument maintenance or what we called “clean and shine” – our daily duty reminders. 
 
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& There were multiple steps in handling each of these paper checklists. At the end of each month, key operators had to gather checklists for their stations, and then print, copy, and distribute the new forms for the current month. 

At the end of every month, they were ALL brought to me for sign off and review. Because of the number of different clipboards, different forms, different frequencies of each checklist, it simply was not efficient for me to check every clipboard, each checklist, and every form each day for completeness. So at the end of the month I would load them all into my cloth grocery sack, and I would spend my weekends reviewing every. single. form.
 
Reviewing the forms was only half of the battle. In a busy place like this, it is hard to remember what you did yesterday- let alone weeks ago. If something did not get checked off, I would have to pull out the staff schedule, find out who was working that station, on that day, and go back and ask after the fact, “Hey why was this missed? Did you forget to do it? Was something broken?”

After all these forms were reviewed and signed, they would be saved in large notebooks or go to a warehouse for storage.  We would spend money to store all this paperwork in the warehouse, because due to lab requirements, these documents have to be accessible for a certain number of years. Then when your lab was reviewed and an inspector wanted to see something, we would send someone over to the warehouse, search for the box, bring the box back to the lab, search for the checklist, and then bring the paper form to the inspector for review. Talk about manual madness overload.
 
After adopting Laboratory Assured Compliance Solution into our lab, feedback is practically immediate, leaving no chance for non-compliance. If something was missed, the technician is alerted, and then an email cascade goes into effect, and I am alerted, rather than waiting for the end of the month to realize something went wrong. Those alarms are going out real time - I no longer have to chase around old issues.

With LACS, every form is digitally stored, easily retrievable and can be printed as necessary for any kind of regulatory body, eliminating the cost of storing paper.
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So how does Laboratory Assured Compliance Solution Work?
It is an electronic record keeping solution that has the added feature of notifications if something does not get done. It also has features where you can track inventory and fulfill all of our requirements for ISO 15189 compliance.

Oh no, I am not a technical person, I cannot adopt this into my lab. 
Yes you can. Before using this solution in the lab, I didn’t even own a smart phone. Now, I come into work every morning, open up my administrator portal, and the calendar shows me 100% compliance throughout the week. Any non-conformity is easily identifiable.
 
Timely compliance is my single greatest take away from using LACS. There is little chance that any kind of activity or maintenance, or form to be missed because the alerts are there to keep everyone on task. It simply does not allow for anything to slip through the cracks.
 
& The coolest part? The fact that we can combine all of our ISO records with our regular lab records makes it really sweet. It started out as just a laboratory maintenance solution, and has evolved into keeping our ISO inventory logs, temperature reports, and Kapios Health is developing an add-on for laboratory competency.  There is so much potential for evolution, the possibilities are truly infinite.
 
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About the author
Bonnie Rashleigh has worked at ProMedica Labs / Toledo Hospital for 36 years and for the last 5 years has been the Technical Supervisor of the Biochemical Pathology Department. Bonnie works in ProMedica’s North Campus lab which is the main laboratory for the hospitals that comprise ProMedica Health Systems.